With a little effort it’s pretty simple to debunk fake stuff on the internet. This morning I saw that a friend of mine posted that there was an Arby’s in Florida that had won approval through a loophole to open a “whites only” Arby’s. Doing a quick google search turned up a snopes page directing you to info that the article was on a satirical web site – one that writes fictional stories. Things like that take on a life of their own when they catch a wave on the Facebook ocean.

The problem is that people believe everything they see on Facebook. Here’s a news flash – not everything you read on the internet is true.

1 Thessalonians 5:20-21 finds Paul telling Christians to “…test everything and hold fast to what is good”. Too many people get their theology (or understanding of God) from Facebook. 2 Timothy 4:3 tells us that people will find and follow people who tell them what they want to hear.

If you want to believe God is primarily accepting and loving and calls us only to love people, you can find preachers and leaders who have that as their primary agenda and you will follow them. You can find others that believe we can ‘love people straight to hell’ if we don’t call people to turn from their sin as Peter did in Acts. If you believe that, you can find people preaching that.

The bottom line is that we should listen to a variety of voices and not take any of them at face value (including mine). And we should not necessarily discount one just because the voice says something we don’t want to hear. We should also not believe the voice just because it tickles our itchy ears telling us what we want to hear.
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